Make Room for the Good.

When I speak about productivity, the first step to focusing more on things that matter is to discard things that don’t.

Think about it like this:

You’ve got 24 hours in a day – that’s the size of your plate. And it’s full of food – those are your tasks. Some of the food is good (healthy, productive), some of it is “bad” (wasteful, busy). You cannot add more food onto the plate, in any capacity, until something is removed.

Get rid of the bad to make room for the good.

I think about this today because our mental and emotional states are similar.

For example, I was scrolling through Facebook earlier this week. I don’t spend a lot of time on that platform but I got a notification of a message so I got sucked down the rabbit hole.

As I looked through my timeline, I noticed something:

A lot of it was negative.

Actually, “negative” may not be the right word. Not sure what you’d call it but the majority of posts certainly weren’t constructive or uplifting. Not the type of information with which I want to condition my brain politically, socially, morally, etc.

So, I did something about it. I spent 5-10 minutes scrolling my timeline, selecting “unfriend” or “unfollow” or “not interested” for different posts.

You know how that felt?

FREEING.

Sometimes you need to get rid of the bad to make room for the good.

I’m not saying I got rid of everyone that doesn’t agree with me. That’s the definition of confirmation bias. I’m also not saying every post has to be unrealistically optimistic.

But yesterday was a day meant for love, connection and goodness, and maybe that’s not where this finds you. Maybe things feel a bit dark, disconnected and lonely. I spent a lot of Valentine’s Days alone.

Facebook was just my example – it can be any social platform. Or it can be what you watch on TV. Or what you listen to in the car. Or what you read in the newspaper (yeah, those still exist!). Or who you surround yourself with in life. Or what you choose to let into your heart.